In modern surgery, powered surgical tools are some of the most important: instruments medical personnel have available to then for performing certain surgical procedures. Many surgical tools take the form of some type of motorized handpiece to which a cutting accessory like a drill bit, a burr or a saw blade are attached. These tools are used to selectively remove small sections of hard or soft tissue or to separate sections of tissue. The ability to use powered surgical tools on a patient has lessened the physical strain of physicians and other personnel when performing surgical procedures on a patient. Moreover, most surgical procedures can be performed more quickly and more accurately with powered surgical tools than with the manual equivalents that proceeded them.
A typical powered surgical tool system, in addition to the handpiece, includes a control console and a cable that connects the handpiece to the console. The control console contains the electronic circuitry that converts the available line voltage into energization voltage suitable for powering the motor integral with the handpiece. Typically, the control console is connected to receive a signal from the hand or foot switch used to control the tool; based on that signal, the console sends appropriate energization signals to the handpiece so as to cause it to operate at the desired speed.
As the use of powered surgical tools has expanded, so has the development of different kinds of powered surgical tools that perform different surgical tasks. For example, a femoral reamer, used in hip replacement surgery is a relatively slow speed drill that operates at approximately 100 RPM, yet it draws a relatively high amount of power, approximately 400 Watts. Neurosurgery requires the use of a craniotome which is a very high powered drill that operates at approximately 75,000 RPM and that requires a medium amount of power, approximately 150 Watts. In ear, nose and throat surgery, micro drills are often employed. A typical micro drill rotates between approximately 10,000 and 40,000 RPM and requires only a relatively small amount of power, approximately 40 Watts.
As the number of different types of powered surgical tools have expanded, it has become necessary to provide each type of handpiece a mechanism for ensuring that it receives the appropriate energization signals. The conventional solution to this problem has been to provide each handpiece with its own power console. As can readily be understood, this solution is expensive in that it requires hospitals and other surgical facilities to keep a number of different consoles available, in the event a specific set of tools are required to perform a given surgical procedure. Moreover, in the event a number of different surgical tools are required in order to perform a given surgical procedure, it is necessary to provide the operating suite with the individual consoles required by the different handpieces. Having to provide these different consoles contributes to clutter in the operating suite.
An attempt to resolve this issue has been to design consoles that can be used to supply power to different handpieces. While these consoles have performed satisfactorily they are not without their own disadvantages. Many of these consoles are arranged so that the medical personnel have to manually preset their internal electronics in order to ensure that they be provided the desired energization signals to the tools to which they are connected. Moreover, given the inevitable human error factor, time also needs to be spent to ensure that once configured for a new tool, a console is, in fact, properly configured. Requiring medical personnel to perform these tasks takes away from the time the personnel could be attending to the needs of the patient.
There have been some attempts to provide surgical tools capable of providing some configuration information to the complementary control consoles. These tools typically take the form of handpieces with one or two resistors that collectively provide one or more analog signals back to the console. The console, based on the magnitude of these analog tool type signals, is capable of performing some basic tool configuration functions such as, identify the type of the tool or cutting instrument attached thereto. While these powered tool systems have proved useful, they are of limited value in that any significant information about the tool, such as an indication of the maximum power that can be applied thereto, or the maximum speed at which its motor can be driven must be contained within the complementary console. In order for a console to properly configure itself for use with a particular handpiece, the console must be preloaded with this data. If the console does not contain this data, the recognition data contained within the tool is of relatively marginal value.
Moreover, as the number of powered surgical tools has expanded, so has the number of accessory features that can be used with the tools. Some tools, for example are provided with hand switches integral with the tool that allow the physician to control the on/off state of the tools as well as the speed of the motor internal to the tool. Still other tool systems are provided with foot switches. This later type of control arrangement is provided for the convenience of medical personnel who, instead of controlling tool speed with their hands, prefer controlling tool speed with their feet. One reason some foot switch tool control assemblies are preferred is that it eliminates the need have a hand switch, which is a physical object that some physicians find interferes with their grasp of the handpiece.
Still other powered surgical tool systems are provided with integrated light and/or water sources. The light source typically includes some type of light emitting member attached to the head of the surgical tool. The light source is provided in the event the surgeon requires a high intensity light to be directed onto the surgical site where a surgical task is being performed. The water source is typically connected to an irrigation pump. A water source is typically attached to a surgical tool in situations where it. is desirable that the surgical site be irrigated essentially simultaneously with the execution of the surgical task.
The conventional solution to providing surgical tools with the desired accessories has been to design individual tools their own fixed accessories. Some tools, for example, are provided with hand switches while other tools do not include these switches. Similarly, some tools are provided with integral conduits for supplying light and/or water to the surgical site while other tools do not include these attachments. In a surgical facility, the choice of surgical tool can be a function of variables such as physician preference and the type of surgical task being performed. It can be quite costly to provide a number of different tools, each with its own set of accessory features, in order to make appropriate accommodation for individual personal preferences and surgical requirements.
Moreover, the tool accessories typically require their own set of control signals to regulate their operation. Often this has been accomplished by providing the accessories, such as the light and water units, with their own control consoles that are separate from the control consoles used to control the application of power to the associated handpieces. The need to provide these additional control consoles further contributes to both the cost of properly equipping an operating suite and the clutter within the suite.
There have been attempts at reducing tool proliferation by providing surgical tools with removable hand switches and removable light and water clips. The hand switches, once removed, reduce some of the structural components that are bothersome to some surgeons. However, these tools are typically provided with some type of permanent holder to secure the hand switch in place. These holders still have the potential of interfering with the grasp of the tools to which they are attached. Moreover, these removable units must still be provided with some type of control unit. In order to maximize the utility of these removable units, as discussed above, they are often provided with their own control consoles. Still another disadvantage of this type of tool assemblies is that their light and water units have complementary control buttons that are depressed in order to control the actuation of these units and their rates of operation. The inclusion of these control buttons further adds to the overall number of control buttons that are presented to the personnel in the surgical suite. The presentation of these buttons, when they are not needed thus presents surgical personnel with extraneous information that may detract their attention from the matters and instrument controls on which they should be concentrating.
Moreover, recently surgical tools have been developed that have different power requirements than conventional handpieces. For example, for some surgical procedures a physician may wish to use a tool that includes a battery pack for applying power. Sometimes, in order to avoid the inevitable problem of the battery drainage, the surgeon may wish to substitute a line-powered power unit for the battery pack. Still other new tools do not even include traditional electrically powered motors. An example of these tools are surgical lasers and ultrasonic scalpels. These tools have their own power requirements and complementary accessories. In order to make these tools available to surgical. personnel, it has been necessary to bring an additional set of control consoles into the surgical suite. Having to provide this additional equipment has further contributed to the cost and complexity of equipping a surgical suite.